Chicago center brings meditative mindset to combating youth violence

Buddhist leader, group to host gathering to teach activists, young students ways of handling turbulence

April 27, 2013|By Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune reporter

CeaseFire violence interrupter Rick Stewart meditates Wednesday during a session on mindfulness practice with Buddhist leader Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Shambhala Meditation Center of Chicago is convening a Youth Congress on Peace on Saturday to teach anti-violence workers and youths how to apply Buddhist principles to the problem of violence in Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune)

Most of the CeaseFire interrupters sat up in their chairs and closed their eyes, following the quiet direction of the small man in yellow and orange robes at the head of the conference table.

The Tibetan lama led the workers through mindfulness meditation this week. The CeaseFire team members in turn told the Sakyong about their work as violence interrupters in troubled areas of the city. At one point, Tio Hardiman, director of CeaseFire Illinois, translated: A "chop" from a street operation is a share of the take.

On Saturday the spiritual leader of the worldwide Shambhala Buddhist community will teach similar meditation to other people working against street violence — and young people living in its maelstrom.

The Shambhala Meditation Center of Chicago, which has for years taught ways to pursue inner peace, has turned its efforts to outward peace. It is convening a daylong Youth Congress on Peace to apply Buddhist principles to the problem of youth violence in Chicago.

The gathering at Malcolm X College is the response by Chicago Shambhala practitioners to their leader's challenge to take the Buddhist pursuit of peace to people and places in desperate need of it.

"I think meditation and spirituality have been primarily focused on the self, the individual," the Sakyong said after the meeting with CeaseFire, one of the Youth Congress' co-sponsors. "But I feel it can be a powerful medium for social transformation."

"He told us to start being less like a school and be more like life," said Janet Hasz, a longtime meditation teacher at the local Shambhala center and an organizer of the congress.

The center, which will soon move from its quirky Rogers Park mansion to the West Loop, invited Chicago groups and students to help design a peace congress. Shambhala held training sessions to teach the youths how to moderate discussions and invited them to talk about what peace felt like to them.

Many of the young people said they had no idea.

"They asked how often people actually experience peace," said Ashley Williams, 17, a student at Chicago's Sullivan House Alternative School who will lead a discussion group. "The majority of us don't."

The Youth Congress is expected to draw about 600 people, including 250 Chicago Public Schools students. Sessions on mindfulness meditation will be sprinkled throughout the day.

For many of the CPS students, it will be a new experience.

"Somebody told me that when you meditate, you breathe, and you just, like, zone out," said Jaquan Reed, 19, a student at Youth Connection Leadership Academy and discussion leader for the event. "I never did it before, but I'd like to see what it's like."

He thinks meditation could help prevent the kind of violence that surrounds his life. Seven of his friends have been shot, including a close friend who was killed.

"People let their emotions take over, and they do stupid things, and then they're in jail thinking about it," Reed said.

Ashley Williams has been meditating on her own. She said it has calmed the anxiety that contributed to problems at her previous school and eased her nervousness about walking in her neighborhood. She lives a block from where 6-month-old homicide victim Jonylah Watkins was shot last month.

Once a week she turns off all electronics, lights a candle and incense, and sits quietly, focusing her mind on what she smells, hears and sees.

"There are things I can't control," she said. "But to know that I can come home and create that environment, and have that time to just let go and relax — it's definitely helpful. I would say it's necessary."

"Meditation is very practical," CeaseFire's Hardiman said. "Any time you can teach people that it's OK to take a step back, rather than make a mistake that will cost you for the rest of your life. ... I guarantee you, 70 percent of the guys locked up in the penitentiary, if they could just take back that second when they made a bad decision, they would do it in a heartbeat."

Beyond those pragmatic benefits are broader ones, the Sakyong said.

"When you meditate, you connect with your humanity, with your empathy," he said. "That's the beginning of social dialogue."

The congress will end with participants voting on solutions that will be submitted to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who are honorary co-chairs of the weekendlong Imagining Peace Conference, which was to include a talk Friday night by the Sakyong at the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.

"We don't see the source of violence, the main issue, as some kind of psychological thing," said Adam Lobel, a senior teacher with Shambhala based, along with the Sakyong, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "We're not saying, 'Oh, the victims and the people who live in the most violent neighborhood, it's up to them to change their minds.'"

And meditation is no easy fix.

"It's hard work," he said. "A lot of us have been practicing meditation for many, many years, and we still get stressed-out and angry. It's not like we think this is an easy answer."

But it answers a powerful need, Shambhala's Hasz said, judging by the response when Lobel led a silent meditation at one of the training sessions.

"He just asked people to close their eyes and pay attention to their bodies and breathe for five minutes. And you could hear a pin drop in that room," she said.

"The depth of the quiet — hunger, that's what it felt like to me."

The Imagining Peace Conference is open to the public. Saturday's Youth Congress on Peace runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Malcolm X College, 1900 W. Van Buren St. Admission is $85 and includes breakfast and lunch. Sunday is the all-day program Peace Practices. More information is at imaginingpeace.com.